The Dark Origins of Sleeping Beauty

By Timothy Sexton, published May 05, 2008
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Sleeping Beauty has been a point of interest and creative exhaustion for everyone from Walt Disney and the apex of his control over his company's feature-length animated films to Anne Rice and the apex of her lurid example of the purplest of prose. I was never able to get past twenty pages of Interview with the Vampire, but Ms. Rice's sadomasochistic fantasia that appropriated the story of our heroine awakened from the deepest of slumber, well, now that's writing! If you've avoided watching the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty because you think it is old-fashioned and syrupy like Snow White or Cinderella, then take that misplaced modernist cap off your head and revel in the Disney movie that is still, arguably perhaps, the most beautifully animated film to ever come from the House of Mouse. Not to mention that Sleeping Beauty also contains Disney's greatest villain: the beautifully vengeful Maleficent.

 
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The Dark Origins of Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty.

Credit: Public Domain

Copyright: Public Domain

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Yep, I actually went and looked up early animation and that Snow Queen movie (which isn't Sleeping Beauty but has a certain kiddie matinee resonance with me). Sandra Dee, Tommy Kirk, Patty McCormack (of The Bad Seed) . McCormack was great in The Snow Queen as a little girl named Angel who was torn between good and evil. Sandra Dee was fine as Gerta and I'm happy to say I have the rare recording (soundtrack) to that movie. I listened to it for years as a kid, on rainy Saturday mornings. I think it developed an ear for language but that may be just my way of rationalizing the whole writing thing.

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Posted on 05/09/2008 at 12:05:38 AM

 
Ugh! I don't like this version. Who'dve thought a guy would report on anything about Sleeping Beauty though?! Thanks. You must be a romantic at heart.

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Posted on 05/05/2008 at 6:05:38 PM

 
Children's literature is a favorite topic of mine and I remember the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty quite vividly. I also recall a movie called The Snow Queen (was it a dual project with Disney and a Russian animation company?) It is an odd meshing of people, voices (Sandra Dee?) and animation but the story is vivid and doesn't pander to children. They also have the European flavor that makes the story so well done. My children could never relate to the animation but I always found the Snow Queen in that version to be unforgettable, haunting. Thanks for reminding me how Perrault tied into Sleeping Beauty.

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Posted on 05/05/2008 at 12:05:41 PM

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